RAID 0 Problems

[Matt1eD]

Are there any problems associated with RAID 0?

Thanks

[islasian]

Raid 0 is good for doing gaming and some video editing. What it basically does is store pieces data on both sets of drives and thus enables a quicker access/load time.

The only bad thing is, if you have one of the drives go out on you, you lose what ever you had on that set of Raid 0 drives.

If you have one of the newer Intel chipsets that lets you do Matrix Raid(ICH6R), you can have two drives and configure them to do Raid 0 on the first partition and then Raid 1 on the other partition, by backing stuff up(important stuff that you don't want to lose) on the Raid 1 side and still have your fast access time with the Raid 0 partition.

[silentphoenix]

Ive got a raid 0 setup just recently (2 ide 120gb maxtor dm9's on a siliconimge raid controller PCI). Sis Sandra says that the bandwidth is 78MB/s (single drive was 45 or something). I havent got anything on it at the moment, so cant say anything about real world performance, but i can say that i find the noise annoying (it accessing 2 drives simultaneously and i only have one hdd silencer).

I know that if ure using 2 disks, then its more likely to fail, but can anyone quantify this? I know that theoretically speaking it mean that the reliability is halved, but what are peoples expeiences with this?

islasian - is that the "little ninja" in ure sig? My favorite bit would be
archer assasin dude: "Arrggghhh you chopped of my foot!"
little ninja: "Sorry, i was meant to get your head"

[skuzgib]

I know that if ure using 2 disks, then its more likely to fail, but can anyone quantify this? I know that theoretically speaking it mean that the reliability is halved, but what are peoples expeiences with this?

According to GCSE maths, the probabilty of one OR the other failing is the probability of one failing + the probability of one failing;

while the probability of BOTH failing is the probability of one failing X the probability of one failing...

[Matt1eD]

sorry, I got my RAIDS confused! Are there any problems with RAID 1. And will I know when a drive fails?

[silentphoenix]

According to GCSE maths, the probabilty of one OR the other failing is the probability of one failing + the probability of one failing;

while the probability of BOTH failing is the probability of one failing X the probability of one failing...

Lol, i know this - its only theretically tho. In real life, just because you have 2 hard disks doesnt mean that they are twice as likely to fail so was asking for ppls real life experience. Also, is there much difference between onboardn raid controllers and separate PCI cards.

The only problwm with raid 1 is that you lose 50% of your storage (1 disk mirrors the other), but also mean that you have a complete backup of ure data. Ideally you want to have 3 or more disks in RAID 5, but the controller that support RAID 5 are more expensive.

Im not sure about how disk recovery works with RAID 1 - it might even depend on the controller you use.

[iranu]

I run a raid 0 system 2 x160g sata drives. I certainly see an improvement when writing to the disks. Windows installation took no time at all as does installing 4 gig games or transfering data.

I can't really comment on game loading times, I haven't used another system for a while. Whilst my comp works very well I'm unsure whether I would go down the raid 0 route again even though I've had no problems.

All drives, whether in raid 0,1,5,or on their own are all susceptable to your power supply blowing up and taking them out too. Never rely on your drives for important data - back up to removable media.

[islasian]

sorry, I got my RAIDS confused! Are there any problems with RAID 1.

It's all good... there is no problems with RAID 1. You can acutally setup RAID 1 with redundancy. A cheap way to setup RAID is with WinXP. You just have to convert your disk from *BASIC* to *DYNAMIC* and then you can stripe, mirror, or even setup a RAID 5. You will want to have these on at least a ATA133 IDE channel or on an onboard raid controller(better). Add-in RAID controllers work better of coarse, Adaptec, Emulex are some good add-in RAID controllers, we use these at work all the time(and other brands as well), and we jack up the bandwidth on these cards and test them for failure(depending on what kind of feature we're trying to get).

And will I know when a drive fails?

Depends on your controller and how you set them up. If it's software base (done by WinXP/Win2k3) the only thing you can do is check up on it in Computer Management and check the drives when you start your system, sometimes you will get a pop-up stating something went wrong with one of your disk.
If it's hardware dependant, then you should have a utility with the card that monitors your drives health status, and that should be the one to let you know if you have a bad drive. Plus, you'll find out when you try to write to it or access it and you can't..doh!!!

islasian - is that the "little ninja" in ure sig? My favorite bit would be
archer assasin dude: "Arrggghhh you chopped of my foot!"
little ninja: "Sorry, i was meant to get your head"

Yeah, that be Ninjai.... I acutally have two favorites, the one with the inventor who cusses more in 5min than I've ever heard anyone cuss, and chapter 9, when the master $hitz his pants and the servents asks "What's that smell?"
Master replies "Shut up and get my horse!"

[Matt1eD]

thanks

Matt